You’re away from home, perhaps missing family commitments, probably working like a dog and shattered as a result. Business trips are no picnic. So how would you feel if you had to head to a budget hotel at the end of the day, for your few moments of R&R? Budget accommodation is becoming more popular It seems more and more businesses are opting to bed their travelling staff down in cheap digs rather than pay out for a little more luxury. Budget chain Travelodge said in October that business travellers account for more than half of its sales and it […]

Risks on the road: are you keeping your female employees safe? Sexual harassment, assault and even kidnapping. Those are not things you would expect to confront while doing your job. But they were among top safety concerns for women businesses travellers in a recent survey. The Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) research concluded that female business travellers face greater personal safety risks on the road, but that few corporate travel policies take such threats into account. But should a company’s travel policies address female safety in particular? Is it different to keeping your employees safe generally? “While female business travellers […]

Light switches in the wrong place? Hotels miles away from meetings? Flights at unsociable hours? When you’re on the road, negotiating a packed schedule of meetings, these are the sort of bugbears that can make life unnecessarily difficult for employees. So how do you make sure your staff have the best experience when they travel for work? To help, we spoke to a range of business travellers to uncover the biggest gripes, so you can take some of the hassle out of your staff’s travel. A lack of space Who wouldn’t love a little more legroom on flights? A cramped […]

A meeting in New York, back home for a few days and then off to Shanghai followed by Tokyo to meet more clients. It’s the sort of schedule that sounds glamorous and important, right? But there’s a ‘dark side’ to business travel. A study by the University of Surrey and Lund University in Sweden say factors such as stress, loneliness and distance from community and family networks are often ignored and they can cause big issues. It’s easy to see how frequent business flyers could become lonely, travelling to countries where they may not speak the language and spending long […]

Do your employees fancy living in one country and working in another? It might be that they work for you in the UK, but are desperate to live the good life in France. Or maybe you’ve given them an international assignment but it’s not practical for them to drag their family along. Thanks to the marvels of modern technology, changing views on work/life balance and more flexible working practices, international commuting is now a reality for in-demand workers including experienced executives and particularly highly-skilled individuals. Lee Hamilton, partner at accountancy firm Blick Rothenberg, says international commuters are a small but […]

We’ve just made it even quicker and easier to give your team the funds they need when they need it. There’s no need to top-up your employees’ cards one-by-one, our new multi card top-up feature allows you to top-up multiple cards at the same time. A quick and easy way to get funds to your team instantly. Perfect if you have a whole team heading away on a business trip, or if you’ve fallen behind on providing funds for regularly occuring expenses. How multi card top-ups work 1. Once you’re logged into the FairFX Expense Platform click ‘Multi card top-up’ […]

Birthday drinks at a nightclub, vet fees for a poorly rabbit and ‘a three-piece suite for my partner to sit on when I’m doing my accounts’. Those were among unusual expenses claims that HMRC revealed earlier this year. All were rejected. We wanted to know about more unusual and extravagant requests that employees put on expenses – and wanted to share some insight on how best to deal with them. What becomes clear in the examples we uncovered, revealed below, is the need to find a balance between allowing staff freedom, while ensuring they are aware of a clear and […]

Say hello to our latest FairFX Expense Platform features – specially developed to help you keep track of staff expenses and cut down on reporting time. Our brand new features allow you to: Upload photos of receipts Start annotating card transactions on the mobile app Add VAT amounts to transactions To start using the new features straight away check out our guide. Read more about how these features can help you below: Uploading receipts If you need to keep a more detailed record of staff spending by keeping copies of receipts, you can now do it directly on the FairFX […]